Knowledge management - glossary

Like all professions, the world of Knowledge
Management has its own cryptic terminology. Words like
"taxonomy" and of course the consultant's timeless favourite,
"paradigm". Rather than be confounded by such phrases in your
quest to comprehend the incomprehensible, use our glossary for the
enlightenment you seek.

Artificial intelligence

A broad term encompassing anything relating to making computers
behave like humans.

Balanced Score-Card

Developed by Kaplan and Norton as a tool to measure intellectual
capital. Designed to focus managers' attention to those factors that
help the business strategy, it adds alongside financial measures,
measures for customers, internal processes and innovation

Human capital

that which is in the minds of individuals: knowledge, competencies,
experience, know-how etc.

Structural capital

"that which is left after employees go home for the
night": processes, information systems, databases, patents etc.

Customer capital

The value of an organisation's relationships with its customers
including the intangible loyalty of its customers to the company or a
product, based on reputation, purchasing patterns, or the customers'
ability to pay.

skills, usually through excessive downsizing and lay-offs

Intellectual capital

Knowledge that is of value to an organization - made up of human
capital, structural capital, and customer capital.

Community of Practice

Organisational groups of people that assume roles based on their
abilities and skills, instead of titles and hierarchy. Also referred
to as a community of interest

Content mapping

Identifying and organising a high-level description of the meaning
contained in a collection of electronic document

Corporate amnesia

The loss of collective experience, embedded tacit knowledge, and
accumulated

Data mining

A technique to analyse data in very large databases. Analysis can
reveal trends and patterns and can be used to improve vital business
processes.

Electronic collaboration

A process through which project partners can contribute jointly to
works in progress via email, groupware, public networks, etc.

Economic Value Added (EVATM)

Developed by Stern Stewart. Another measurement tool related to the
return on capital employed.

Expert system

The branch of artificial intelligence that develops computer
programs to simulate human decisions in many fields.

External structure

refers to customer and supplier relationships and the organisation's
image. That's assets such as image, relationships with customers,
vendors, and also competitors and other associations. In short,
external structure refers to assets that depend on relationships
outside your organization

As an accounting term it refers to assets in a balance sheet that
are not "tangible", such as copyrights, acquired goodwill,
patents, brands. As used by Sveiby it is a synonym to intellectual
capital and includes all assets that are not (yet) entered in the
balance sheet. An approximation of the commercial value of intangible
assets is the difference between market value and the net asset value
of a company. External Structure + Internal Structure + Individuals'
Competence = Intangible Assets.

Internal structure

...that's your organisation... and includes assets like patents and
brand names, manuals, systems processes...everything that constitutes
what we normally call "organisation", including very fuzzy
areas called culture. Managers are also part of internal structure
because it's their task to maintain and keep it viable over the long
run, thereby ensuring the viability of the organization.

Individual competence

refers to the capacity of employees to act in a wide variety of
situations. It's their education, skills, experience, energy and their
attitudes that will make or break the relationships with the customers
and the products or services that are provided. Sveiby uses it instead
of Knowledge.

Invisible assets

sometimes used as a synonym to intangible assets.

Invisible equity

is the difference between the Market Value of a company and the
Visible Equity.

Knowledge base

An organized structure of information which facilitates the storage
of intelligence in order to be retrieved in support of a knowledge
management process.

Knowledge management

The systematic process of finding, selecting, organizing, distilling
and presenting information in a way that improves an employee's
comprehension in a specific area of interest.

Knowledge-centric re-engineering - KCR:

The application of BPR and change enablement methodologies in
support of enterprisewide KM, thereby effecting major cultural and
process change that are fundamental to the management of the
enterprise's competitive position.

Know-How:

The ability to cause a desired result. This may be the most valuable
Knowledge element of all. It is forward looking and predictive and
reflects the person or organizations ability to act and achieve its
goals.
This is built on another key Knowledge element
"understanding" -what is, what was and why - that deals with
knowing historic cause and effect and determining the current state of
things.

Neural network

A form of artificial intelligence in which a computer simulates the
way a human brain processes information.